


Tin, Paper, Snow

by mimiofthemalfoys



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Animals, Ballet, Dancing, Dolls, F/M, Fairy Tale Style, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Forgive Me, Gen, Gift Exchange, Toys, also everybody is a doll, except the greyjoys, extreme cheesiness, i tried to make it like Disney and ended up modelling it on Guillermo del Toro's work, inspired by Hans Christian Anderson's The Steadfast Tin Soldier, jonsa, like literally crapton of cheese, petyr is a total dick surprise!, this sucks but anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-06 05:43:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14635287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimiofthemalfoys/pseuds/mimiofthemalfoys
Summary: “Brave soldier, never fear.Even though your death is near.”The flames danced as high as a dream in a million, billion colours- scarlet, orange, purple, even blue, casting rich shimmering shadows on their faces and their hands and their hair. He steadied himself, stood upright, held onto her for dear life. "Would that we were made of glass," he thought. "Tin doesn't do well here. Nor paper."Higher and higher, the flames rose, crackling, singing.Tin, Paper, Snow, they whispered.It's time to let her go.





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mia_Zeklos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_Zeklos/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work is based off Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, "The Steadfast Tin Soldier", one of my favourites. It's basically ASOIAF, but set in the world of toys. Along the way, I felt my story lost the Disney vibes and became more Tim Burton but hey, it's Jonsa :)

At the heart of the great silver mountains, where pine trees dance in billowing chiffon-white skirts of snow, all sewn up beautifully with shining stars, where crystal caves shimmer over heavy curtains of steam rising from frothing pools, where forests of rich pink wildflowers spring from the fine filigree of the black, sweet mountain earth, there lies a sleepy little town in a sleepy little valley.

It must be a very sleepy, and a very little town at that, because I can neither give you the name, nor the place on the map, should you ever go seeking it. All I can say is that the streets were made of rounded cobbles in the colours of the rainbow, the houses had red doors with flower wreaths and red roofs with glistening eaves, a little church, a blacksmith’s forge, a bakery, a largely empty jailhouse and canals where the water bubbled and flowed like pale green milk.

There was nothing quite so remarkable about this haunt. Like other towns in the mountains, it had turned its back to the artificialities and glitter of big cities in the plains made of gold and sawdust, and it lay mostly removed from all that happened in the rest of the world. The women worried of too much frost that could eat away the rose-apples they grew painstakingly in large, fragrant glass-gardens, the men worried of wild beasts with jagged teeth that would come down to the valley when the snow rose high and the food grew scarce. Here, up in the dark forests, roamed dangerous creatures never seen nor heard of by men in the flood-plains. Large, monstrous wolflings, called direwolves, ten times the size of the common animal, with eyes of blood and claws that could rake the flesh to the bone. Devil-fish that swam in the ice-cold rivers and surely had an appetite for human flesh. And others. Or so they spoke. The townsmen were possessed of a fantastic capacity for the unknown. They spoke of starfall, of fairies playing in the grass, of music in the air and of hidden treasures at the beds of the hot springs, like you or I would speak of everyday matters and suchlike. Oh they were a strange sort, these people. It was the handiwork of a hundred generations’ isolation, with too much time and too little pleasures, to carve out superb tales of the extraordinary. Nothing much really ever happened here, nothing to spark off stories.

 Not all stories are spoken of though, you know. Some are lost in the dark of the forest, under the freezing ground. Some die with their heroes. Some happen behind our backs; are happening as we speak; within our very houses, only we never see them.

And I’m here to tell you one of those.

* * *

 


	2. Two Hearts

As most stories go, ours too started off on a day like any other, in the little blacksmith’s shop I’ve mentioned before. The place was tiny and hot, even beating out the chill in the air that comes from living in such great heights. Half-a-hundred bellows were stoking flames to the roofs of the glistening ceramic firepits, and the floor was covered with metal shavings like fat iron curls. Everything was boiling hot, every piece of equipment was covered in droplets of moisture from the steam hammer, and everyone looked cross- from the merchant (who peddled the goods away on his cart to neighbouring hamlets) to the little ostler boy (who fed the smithy’s horses) to the assistant smith (who did nothing but seemed worn-out all the same). But nobody was quite so boiling, or sweating, or cross as was old master Mikken. He was angry, and when he was angry he would shout, and today he was shouting something real bad, so loud that his voice carried over the bang of the hammers and the clang of the anvils.

“Damn th’ lot o’ ye, yer thick-skulled, grump-skinned, pea-brained oafs!” every time he shouted, his neck veins, twisted and gnarled, stood out like red and blue branches of a tree. He had a fat torso, and a fatter abdomen, and a large chunk of flesh pretending to be his neck held them together. “Especially this clod o’ dirt!”

The young apprentice with the big blue eyes shifted uneasily on his feet. “A thousan’ apologies, master.”

“Ram yer apology up yer rear, son. A’ll never be able to face th’ Justice now, after th’ mess ye made o’ things. ”

“’M sure he’ll let it be,” mumbled the youth. “It’s jist one of th’ lot.”

“But it’s a body aw’ the same! An' now ye hae messed it, up with yer stupidity!-an' we'll hae tae pay.”

Before them, on a sun-dried, roughly hewn bit of wood, sat five-and-twenty tin soldiers. Brothers, with faces of finely carved, well moulded metal and black cloaks and black breeches so skillfully crafted that where tin ended and where actual folds of ermine and boiled leather began was incomprehensible to the untrained eye. Each soldier stood ramrod straight, longsword in hand, eyes glaring defiantly ahead. Splendid and sharp.

The longsword had been the Justice’s idea. He was the Chief Magistrate of the Town Hall, and the wealthiest man in this region, and he always wore superb wigs. All this-the soldiers and the shouting-had their roots in him.  He had commissioned Mikken to make the tin soldiers for his grandson, a birthday gift. And he had paid generously too, fifty silver pieces, which is why Mikken was so fearful.

For you see-the last soldier from the left, the one with the long, striking face and eyes like cold iron-this tiny tin fellow had one leg, and only the one. The large embossed spoon which the Magistrate had provided for making the soldiers had only so much tin for four and twenty whole men, and a bit more, enough to make the head, the upper half, the arms and even the left leg, but sadly, it ran out when it came to the right one. Even Magistrates with superb wigs, it seemed, could not predict how much tin goes into how many soldiers. And Mikken was cross because the young apprentice had not thought ahead to stock up on some glazed metal the likes of this, which could have, on a better day, saved them from the catastrophe they were about to face.  The Magistrate was due to arrive any moment.

The ostler boy provided the only solution: “Take out the heart and melt it, and mold the leg.”

It wasn’t completely ridiculous. The soldiers had been molded with a tin heart beneath their metallic sheets of skin. Everyone seemed to think this was the best possible option. However Mikken wouldn’t hear of it.

“A feller withit a heart is a ‘ollow feller,” he said gravely. “An’ when th’ boy sees all th’ fellers solid an’ strong and th’ last one ringin’ like a bell, whit will he think? Son, we will nae melt th’ heart. Tell ‘im this body was in a war and took a cannon tae the leg.”

And so it was decided that the last tin soldier, of the wild dark curls and the sad grey gaze, would as things go, keep a heart and forsake a leg.

* * *

 Teetering at the edge of the valley, on a high hill covered with dog-roses and sorrel, stood the Justice’s house. It was a charming place, from the outside and the inside too. The rooms were warm and clean, lit by a lovely fire. The furniture shone in the light of a shower of crystal droplets hanging from a high ceiling. Everything looked beautiful, and tasteful, and well-kept.  The Justice’s wife sat on a red armchair by the hearth. She always smiled when she was working on something new, and today she was doing both. At her feet lay a wicker basket full of paper scraps, wool, silk strips, gossamer fabrics and little beaded jewels and trinkets. Prodding the basket curiously, with a perfect pink nose, was her gentle puppy Lady.

The Justice’s wife took a bunch of threads- their hue a pure autumn red, veined with gold- and she began to nimbly braid them together. Once she’d made a perfect rose-like knot, she added a wreath of tinsel moons and flowers round the braids so that it all looked very dainty. On her lap lay what looked like the shell of an unfinished papier-mâché doll. It had already been painted, a perfect little thing all red and white and blue. Around the tiny waist swirled out clouds of delicate organza, forming a tutu of sorts. A dancing doll, petite and pretty.

Lady gave a tiny whimper. Her mistress bent down, gently stroked her head. “It’s for your new friend, Lady,” the Justice’s wife told her, for she’d just become a grandmother for the second time. This doll was in honour of the little baby. She fastened the knot of red curls upon the doll’s head and then looked at her creation appreciatively like a benevolent fairy godmother.

“What do you think, Lady? Is she perfect? Or should I embellish a bit more?”

Lady simply wagged her tiny tail and cocked her head to one side.

All of a sudden it struck the good woman what her miniature Cinderella was missing. She reached into the wicker basket and rifled around till she found just the thing she was looking for: a tiny heart, made of bright silver spangles. Pinning it to the doll’s body she held it up to the light so that it shone, in all its frothy, silvery brilliance.

“See how pretty she is Lady,” she remarked. “Even paper girls must have hearts.”

* * *

It was frightening how everything seemed murkier when he opened his eyes, as opposed to when he’d been sleeping. It was a pitch-black, labyrinthine sort of darkness, as of a forest at dawn, or a long-frequenting nightmare. The only thing visible was the brilliant polished blade of the longsword he carried. Involuntarily, he tightened his grip on the pommel.

Around him, groaning and flexing, he heard his brothers wake amidst a repeated _thud-thud-thud_ of the first thumps of life in tin hearts. He felt a strange warmth in his chest and realized with startling clarity _\- My heart is beating too_. It hit him then: what he was feeling-this sudden drying of the throat, knotting of stomach, acceleration of the heart-this was _life_ seeping into them. The thought was as comforting as it was unsettling.

From where they stood in the dark, elbows and knees in close proximity, with naught air for one….could it mean they were prisoners? He remembered nothing at all of his past. _Would that it were light so I could see the faces of my brethren_ , he thought.

And suddenly, it wasn’t so very dark anymore.

Up above their heads opened a rectangular patch of bright yellow light, followed by a drizzle of sawdust and old straw. And then a big pink face with large eyes and white teeth looked into their cage. A giant.

“TIN SOLDIERS!” he bellowed happily. _He is no giant_ , our soldier realised. _He is a child. A mere stripling. Nevertheless, this must be our commander._

He watched his brothers leave the cage, one by one. The pink-faced child was lifting them out into the open-there went his pot-bellied, rotund brother with the affable but vacuous gaze and then went the thick-necked brother with the dented coat ( _had he picked fights already_?). Each time a soldier left, the child gave a wild yelp of excitement as he set them down with a metallic _clang_ upon some ground.

Finally, it was his turn. He was in midair, at the mercy of his new master’s podgy pink fingers, surveying how large and magnificent his new cantonment really was, when he heard the child thunder, “Where’s the other leg?”

A thin raspy voice answered- “‘twas blown off in th’ war.  He’s a brave feller.”

“A brave fellow,” the boy repeated. The soldier felt a wee bit disconcerted. He had one leg; it was true, what of that? He stood as straight and grand, if not more, than his two-legged kinsmen. Would he not be accepted? That would be most dishonourable. But then the child said, “He’s brave, Paw, you heard that?”

“I did, my child.”

“But he has one leg.”

“That is also true.”

“He’ll look,” proceeded the thoughtful little fellow, “out-of-place with _these_ -”motioning to the rest of the soldiers arranged on a shining bronze table in orderly rows of six. “And there’s already ‘nuff of them in equal numbers.”

“You plan to throw him?”

_Please no, heavens be good. Don’t put me in the fire._

“Aw no, Paw. I was thinkin’ of putting him in the glass palace. Y’know, Winterfell.”

“Ah. That is very nice of you.”

“An’ he’ll protect the other toys. I’ll put him by the lake.”

“A wise decision.”

He had barely lived a day and he could already feel gratitude, relief and excitement all mixing together in the base of his belly at the words. He’d be separated from his brothers, it was true, but he’d be a sentinel at a palace. A royal guard.

Of Winterfell, whatever and wherever that was.

As he was being taken (horizontally, giddy, almost falling off the arm) to his new post, he heard the old voice call out, “Wouldn’t you name him like you did the others?”

“I have named him already,” came the reply. “I’m calling him Jon; he looks like a Jon to me.”

Jon. Lord Commander Jon. He liked the ring of that. Now all that was left was to see the palace of his dreams, where he’d expected to mount guard for the rest of his tin life.

He couldn't wait.

* * *

The nursery for the new baby was done up in baby blues, and soft pinks, and butter yellows- a place of muted natural light and sorbet-sweet hues. The baby was asleep in a cot. Her grandmother looked over brimming with pride. “She’s as lovely as a doll.”

The mother only smiled. “Your doll?”

“Ah, that was nothing. A bit of paper and beadwork. This here, this is the beauty of being animated. Alive.” She paused. “Where is she anyway? The doll?”

A flush crept up the mother’s neck. “I put her on the shelf-” seeing raised eyebrows, she quickly sought to explain herself- “Mother dearest, don’t take it the wrong way but the baby keeps flinging her away and I was scared she might be dented or damaged.  And she is so…. _red_? like not even a rosy tone, but a real blood-red, and so she was just really standing out, and I wanted everything in this room to be soft and pink-”

“I see.” The truth of course was that papier-mâché ballerinas didn’t fare well in rooms full of ornate porcelain figures, elegant woodwork puppets and real, well-made dolls wearing silk and paste jewels, not organza and cheap spangles. She saw that.

The ballerina sat, looking rather forlorn and tiny, among the large, exquisite cream-coloured figurines with their fine silvery hair and large glassy eyes, dolls imported from the big cities, dolls that cost good money. The Justice’s wife took her down. _Poor darling_ , she thought. _She may not have real diamonds or hair of gold but she is made of love and she has a heart. And she is just as beautiful as these grand ones here._

Aloud she said, “Would you mind if I put her in the playroom instead? That little glass palace your son has?”

Her daughter-in-law had no objections whatsoever. She was probably glad to just get rid of the tacky little thing that stole from the beauty of her pretty baby’s pretty room. So the ballerina was carried out from the room. In the hallway, the lady took a long look at the tiny dancer. There was something indescribably poignant about her eyes, her stance, even her smile.

“I’ll name you Sansa,” she said. “The Charming One.” A perfect name for such a lovely creature. She added, half to the doll, and half to herself, “You shall never go back in that horrid pink nursery. I’ll put you in a place where you’ll burn red and beautiful and free. I’ll make you the Lady of Winterfell.”

The spangle heart did a little jump. And nestled in the palm of her mistress like a paper Thumbelina, Sansa thought, _Oh, thank the Gods._

* * *

It was dark in the playroom, except near the hearth where everything was orange. The little boy set down his present by the fire. Inwardly, Jon flinched. He had no love for flames. All he could remember of his life before the cage was a terrible burning sensation all over his body. The heat made him feel like he would melt, it made him weak, and he hated weakness.

“I’ll set you up now,” the child was saying. “Just you wait. The palace is-”

But what the palace was Jon would never get to know. Because at that moment, the playroom door blew open and a sudden, sharp gust of icy air blew in and near put out the flames. Silhouetted against the snow and the starlight outside the windows, he saw a tall elegant woman standing, cradling in her arms the most exquisitely gorgeous creature he would ever set eyes upon, an otherworldly lady with a full head of warm silky auburn hair, each thread of the neatly braided mass absolutely radiant with the fine graduation of red, gold and chestnut colours. A face as lovely as the dawn-with long black lashes, the gleam of bright blue eyes through them. Soft red lips, light blue organza dress. Blue ribbon roses and spangle moons in her hair. He felt a strange pulsating in his tin heart as he gazed full into her beautiful, beautiful face.

 _I’ve seen a goddess_ , Jon thought.

* * *

From her safe place in her godmother’s arms, Sansa looked down at the man standing by the fire. He had only one leg and he wore all black, save the pommel of his sword, which was a deep red.

 _He’s very handsome_ , she thought. When she was still being painted and made pretty, her mistress had sung songs of knights, brave knights with swords of ice who rode fire-breathing beasts and fought great battles in the name of love. Sansa had been still like a good doll should, but she’d listened to every word of it and oh, she’d loved it. She looked down again. The soldier was slender, graceful, almost a dancer himself in poise. He had windswept dark curls, and even darker eyes. But when the fire spluttered and crackled, sometimes they lit up; his eyes did, in a bright silver flash. She felt something too, a soft stir in her soft heart.

 _I wish he’d be my knight_ , Sansa thought.

* * *

“Oh, it’s you, Gran,” said the child, smiling guilelessly. He held up the soldier. “Look, this is Jon, and he’ll be the new Lord Commander of Winterfell.”

“That’s brilliant, darling. Look, I got someone too. This is Sansa, and she’ll be the new Lady of Winterfell.”

The boy took the paper doll and set it down beside the tin man. “I like her.”

Jon looked at Sansa. _My lady_ , he said, only the humans didn’t notice. _I’ve never seen a sight as lovely as you._

Sansa looked at Jon. _Lord Commander_ , she smiled at him, only the humans were too busy to care. _You are far too gallant._

Dare I say, two hearts were lost that day? The one was made of tin, the other a silver sequin.


	3. The Halls of Winterfell

Hidden by soft muslin curtains embroidered with dragonflies, the palace of Winterfell stood on a marble ledge by the windowsill, at the very corner of the playroom, and its elevation gave it an air of dignity and majesty, even if it were only about the side of an average dollhouse. It was made of pale green glass from a broken mosaic window in the prayer room. The Justice and his grandchild had cleverly twisted bits of red cloth to make it look like some exotic mountain plant snaking round the glass towers in blood-red trellises and wine-red vines. There was a foil flap at the front gate of the tower, which could be pulled down with a needle or a toothpick-the main moat which opened directly onto a Moon Lake.

This was a lake made entirely of one long, shining mirror. It covered the ledge from one end to the other and the end that swooped over the edge of the marble looked like melted ice glistening over a mountain. On the lake swam a flock of wax swans, brushed by pearl-dust. It was called so because on clear nights when the fog lifted and the stars came out to play, moonlight would stream in through the open windows of the room and illuminate the lake, turning it into a luminous sheet.

In the beginning, all this was new, and enchanting to Jon’s beauty-deprived eyes. He drank in the castle and the lake and the swans and each seemed prettier than the last. Yet none, of course was nearly as pretty as the little dancing lady, Sansa herself.

A doll of paper and sparkly things, Sansa occupied pride of place before the main gate of entry to the palace. She stood there like some tiny bird about to take flight, on the very tip of her blue dancing-shoe, only the one on her left, because her right leg was raised upwards in a graceful motion of dance, lost in clouds of fluffy fabric. In the beginning, Jon had thought her to be one-legged like him, and the thought had warmed him to her more than ever. And yet it was only after about four weeks had passed since they’d first met that he mustered the courage to ask her what mishap had cost her a limb. “I lost mine,” he said by way of empathy, “in a war.” Jon was not sure which war was that, he wasn’t sure of anything prior to the dark cage really, except for the fact that something horrid had caused him to be afraid of the fire. However the boy-his master-went on and on about the great battles Jon had fought in blisteringly cold wastelands in the peaks of the mountains, when he played with him, wars against frozen undead and vicious gremlins. _There must be truth in what he said. I am a brave man. I have been a great soldier._

But his lady simply giggled like an elf and said, “I haven’t lost my leg, Commander. Not yet.”

He had been incredulous on learning that, and it must have shown on his face in the rudest of expressions, because the ballerina stopped smiling quite abruptly. But then she leaned in against him to make an acute angle with her head and his stretched out left arm, close, close enough for him to inhale her fragrance- a summery mix of strawberry shortcake and scented crayons, close enough for him to notice that her eyes had the same calm glitter and rich blue colour of a mermaid’s tail, close enough for him to ponder about loud clanging bells in his belly and the strange intimacy of closed angles and stardust coincidences that bring birds of a feather to a glass nest in the snow. And then she said; only her voice was a tiny, silvery whisper-“ _I do have both my legs, Commander, and they are very pretty ones too, I’ll have you know that. The left one is right here, and I daresay, you’re free to search for the right one_.”

“Pardon?” he felt like someone had broken an egg over his skull.

Barely suppressing her laughter, she replied, “Why, it lies underneath my skirts, Lord Commander.”

This was one in a long chain of moments when Jon would be made to feel, intentionally or otherwise, that he knew nothing.

* * *

The disillusionment crept in within a month’s time.

Once their owner was done with them for the evening, he’d run away at the sound of the dinner-gong, and his nurse would run after him, calling out for him to wash his hands, locking the door behind her, plunging the room into darkness. And it was then, in the dark of the night, that all the dolls came alive, emerging to play at war and love.

From their lofty place on the marble mountain, Jon and Sansa looked out over the kingdom of Always Winter like some King and Queen of yore, albeit a King with only one leg and a Queen wearing a sash of tissue. But like any valiant King and any gracious Queen, they were well acquainted with the people of their night land of glass and ice.

First, living in the shadows of the old cabinet that faced the northern windows and often lying at the mercy of needling, chilly winds that blew in from the cracks in the casement were the Wildling-dolls that had been here since the Justice himself had been a babe. The master didn’t often play with them; he didn’t like their coarse feel and “horse smell” as he called it. Their bodies were cloth and straw woven tightly together, and sometimes in early summer, the Justice’s wife would bring them out to thread bands of dry leaves and cowrie shells round their heads and set them on the windowsill, so that they would have their fair share of sun and emit the rich, warm whiff of heat-baked straw. They were, as their names suggested, rather wild, and they only waited for the dark so they could emerge from their cold corners slashing and cursing. Most of the toys gave them a wide berth, choosing to refuse their company and advances systematically. Grenn, Jon’s thick-necked brother, said that the cold and loneliness had driven them quite mad.  Yet Jon privately felt that they weren’t a bad lot. One among them, the tall straw lady with a yellow cloth braid and a silver-white coat, who was named Val, had been the first to stand up for Jon when some of his grander companions had jabbed at him for being one-legged, threatening them with unappetising consequences that would make anyone blush. He had been rather pleasantly surprised by this, but then another of the Wildling dolls, a big, red, shaggy thing of wool and hair named Tormund warned him that Val had an eye on his ‘fancy self’ and roamed the length of the castle everyday for a glimpse of _that damn tin fella_. Jon thereafter wisely stuck to higher ground, where wildlings would not reach him, for blood or love- that is, if tin men could bleed or love.

Then there were the wood-carving bears, on the highest shelf-the old one was Jeor, the hefty, grumpy one was named Jorah, followed by the wrinkly grey mother-bear Maege, her four cubs, all badly dented and chipped and eaten away by an infestation of termites. Sansa was fond of them, especially of the smallest cub, a fierce little thing in better shape than the rest of her family, by the name of Lya. Lya was willful and positively bold; she had trouble remembering the rules of when to come alive and when to become lifeless-wood again-once when the child’s clumsy play had resulted in him dropping Maege to the cold ground far too many times, Lya didn’t hesitate to bite him right in the ankles, and he had screamed loud enough ‘to wake th’ dead’ Tormund gleefully observed, yet nobody could detect the source of the injury, for when the elders arrived, Lya was still and dead-eyed and staring into nothingness from the top shelf.

Willful too was the grey and brown steiff kitten Arry, who was easily the most restless of all the inhabitants of Winterfell. When Arry set out to play at night, she’d give any regular cat a run for its money, climbing up the shelves, knocking off the books and globes, and generally creating a ruckus. She was, by far, Jon’s favourite, delivering messages for him, to the other toys in the playroom, to his more estranged brothers sometimes. Something of her antics stirred up a peculiar urge in him, to be reckless, to live rashly, boldly, on the edge of things.

There were others, the blue-green-silver pebbled mermaids, rejects from the garden pool who now inhabited the goldfish bowl, the clockwork white ravens, whose plumage looked quite real, the crannogmen woven of rattan reeds, who were placed strategically in the potted plants and round the garden, and would climb in through the east window bearing many tales from the outside.   _So many different toys, of many shapes and sizes, yet we are all the same,_ Jon thought at night, as he watched two baby wildlings fight each other with wooden spoons, and Arry chase Lya across the clear water of the Moon Lake. _We are all outcasts, poor man’s playthings, not made for a house like this._ Two of his brothers, Green and Pyp, had made the journey to Winterfell just last week, when an accident during playtime had cost them a nose and an arm each. Jon now harboured no delusions of having been placed in Winterfell as a sort of special position of authority, it was, he observed simply, a refuge for dolls that outlived their prime. _And I outlived mine the day I was born_. _As did Sansa_. The dolls, the _real_ dolls that were put on display when other children came over to play were all kept in the baby’s nursery. Arry had seen them, and she’d returned to tell Jon and Sansa the stories. “Gilded and silvered, like money,” she purred, describing the many wonders she’d come upon during her nighttime adventures. “Some o’ them are gifts from the Duke in the big town, an’ they wear rich embroidered dresses o’ red an’ green an’ gold, an’ big crowns on their head.”

“Crowns like mine?” Sansa asked shyly, touching her ribbons.

Arry _psshed_ emphatically. “No, you silly doll. Real crowns, gold crowns, with jewels enow’ to sparkle more than th’ sun.”

He saw his lady flush a bright pink. “I’d like a gold crown. I’d trade my stupid comb for it.”

“Gold wouldn’t become you,” Jon said. “It should look strange and flashy and very unbecoming. You are the prettiest of us anyway.”

“You have a long way to go, Lord Commander,” Sansa said angrily, “being awful mean like that to ladies you fancy.”

“I do not fancy you,” he said as earnestly as possible, which wasn’t much, since Sansa was still rather beautiful when angry. “And anyway,” he continued, “I should rather much be here, facing the open and the gardens than there in that stuffy pink room with overdressed dolls.”

“At least you’d be loved something proper,” Sansa mused darkly.

“Freedom over being stifled by overbearing love any day. I long to get away from here; even with the freedom, it is dull work guarding a palace and a lady who need not fear anything but the wind, and what good is a metal man and his longsword against the wind?”

Arry guffawed, whether at this exchange, or his insincerity, Jon couldn’t tell.

Yet, it was true. He was tired of pretend-battles, whiling away his time in a sad little corner. He dreamt of stealing Sansa away from this place and sneaking her up to a hill in the open, a hill full of roses, the rare blue ones that would look so pretty against the red of her hair. _Perhaps I worded it wrong_ , he thought casting glance at a rather sullen Sansa, _but I said the truth. Gold wouldn’t become her. She is the Lady of Winter and her crown should be of winter roses. One day, when I shall escape this place, I will make her a winter crown and set it on her head. Ice on fire._

“I wish I had a _real_ crown,” Sansa mused, looking towards the door, wishing, Jon knew, away from the coldness and the loneliness and the darkness of her home, wishing away from a place where her beauty went unappreciated, the music of her dance went unheard, her kind smiles and sweet gestures went unseen, but mostly wishing away from him, poor tin man incapable of love, who would never be the knight she’d dreamed of, who would always put freedom and adventure over everything else.

* * *

 Dance. Jon knew nothing about it.

“But then he knows nothin’ of anythin’,” Arry sneered and Tormund cackled devilishly. “I have four legs an’ a tail and even I know that when lords and ladies mo’ to music it’s called dance. I have seen it.”

“You don’t have to be a lord or a lady to dance,” Sansa said from the edge of the lake, tying up her pretty blue shoes.

“I have ne’er seen a cat dance,” Arry said. “Or a bear. Mayhaps if you taught me and Lya.”

Sansa laughed and then she looked down at the shoe in her hand, and she laughed again.

“I will. First let’s teach this one.”

She stood up, and she held out her arms, white and dimpled and soft as a lily-leaf. “Lord Commander.”

Jon nearly melted. For a whole moment, he wondered what would happen if she opened her arms to him in an embrace, not for teaching him how to sway to music. Like a woman embraces a man. _Heaven help me, what am I thinking of? I am a child’s plaything. To have dreams so sinful….._

He glanced over to his friends, who had mercifully not noticed, who were too busy fooling around, skidding over the frosted glass of the Moon Lake. It was a clear, bright, wintry morning, and the playroom was empty. He gulped, straightened his already straight-as-a-knife-back and used his longsword to propel himself to her. She was looking at him with those peerless blue eyes. “Now,” she said. “Place your arm upon my waist.”

Arry and Tormund broke into helpless fits of laughter. Jon was painfully aware that he had turned the precise shade of Sansa’s hair, but he did as she was told. She guided him to the middle of the lake, and it was then that he realised the glib fact that he might have been brave to fight in great wars (even supposing that he _did_ ) and face off gremlins but he was a complete hedgehog when it came to a mere dance. _Breathe, soldier._

At a glance from the ballerina, Tormund the Giant simpered uncharacteristically and idiotically, and set the needle on the mini-gramophone. What came out was the loveliest sound Jon had ever heard. Quite unlike the scraping, shaking and screaming noises of everyday. _Music._ And Sansa was humming too, keeping the beat, moving him gently along with herself.

Sansa sounded like milk and honey, but she moved like water and silk. it was almost ridiculous how fate had bestowed so much beauty in one person. In comparison, he thought of himself, graceless and clumping along like the stupid hunk of metal that he was. “I’m making a fool of myself,” he said, trying to sound self-aware and ending up sounding pathetic.

“You’re doing wonderfully well,” she replied.

“For a one-legged man?”

“Don’t say that. I do not offer you sympathy. I can only offer you some friendship and some happiness, for us outcasts must stick together, you know.”

“Sansa…” he pondered carefully on his selection of words, not wishing to sound like the fool he was. “Don’t you wish we could escape from this room, this house, someplace far and above all? Don’t you feel smothered by the monotony of it all? Sometimes I wish I could run away-”

“I dream of it too, sometimes,” she said, slowing down a bit for his benefit. “I think I could break away from everything-this silly fake castle, and dancing on a mirror and hoping it turns to a lake, playing pretend at all things. Then I remember, _I’m a doll, playing pretend is the only thing I’m supposed to do._ This is my fate, acting lifeless and limp when I’m supposed to, even when my hair is pulled and sash is opened, and standing all day long on a leg trying to look charming and calm. We’ll never escape this house, Lord Commander, not anytime soon. Why not make the most of it? You have your friends, I have my music. We should try to be happy with what we were dealt.”

“I’ll never be happy. This place makes me tired and sick. I want to go further north, to the real lands of Always Winter. Where adventures abound.”

“You truly _are_ unaware of things,” she told him sadly. “The cold will do metal no good. You know no more of reality than I do, with my gold crown dreams.”

They’d stopped moving, he realised suddenly. They’d become still, so very still, in the centre of a frozen lake that was neither a real lake, nor really frozen. The only thing real about that moment was Sansa’s startling, sorrowful blue gaze burning a hole into his head, into his dreams. Their heads were close together. _What would happen, if he leaned in a wee bit closer? Seal the gap between tin man and tiny ballerina? Who would see; who would care?_ He leaned forward, and Sansa’s eyes widened but at that very moment Arry hissed, “Oi, lovebirds! Get here! New tidings!”

The magic was broken. He looked at Sansa, she broke away from him and resumed her former place at the gate, all rather cold and stiffly. He wondered what he’d said or done to offend her. _Mayhaps it was my mind she read. She knows my awful dishonourable dreams about her_. She _thinks me to be a mischief-maker_. It was rather embarrassing. He’d have to keep his distance from her if he was to prove himself a man of honour. _Stop being so obvious_. Facing Arry, he asked her, rather irritably, “Well, what is it?”

“A new doll shall be coming here at Winterfell, Mya told me. They’ll redo the castle especially for her, she’s a grand one. She’s to be the new Lady here. They are bringing her all the way in from another country so I can bet my front paws she’ll be a sight to look at.”

“Hopefully,” Pyp chimed in. “We could do with a better-looking one than those clumps of straw. Even a tin man needs a woman.”

“Give me straw over gold any day,” Arry said. “She’d trample you underfoot before she saw your face.”

“My kind of woman,” Tormund said. Jon laughed. But quick as a deer, he cast a glance at Sansa, who was staring with immense concentration at the swans. What did all of this mean for her? She was the lady of Winterfell, had been so, ever since his memory came alive. Would she be pushed down, relegated to a lower spot? What could become of her?

All that was left to do was wait and watch.

* * *

 Spring was here.

The valley heaved a collective sigh of relief as the snow melted, leaving sparkling diamonds on the ground, to make space for the first plants; the saplings were the exact shade as baby grasshoppers. In the Justice’s garden, there was a wilderness of flowers-bleeding hearts, ivy, rhododendrons, pink cassia blossoms all the way from the East, spiky, patterned, fragrant flowers.

Large pink roses grew up the windows of the winter kingdom. The residents of Winterfell waited, too excited about their playtime to notice or care at all about the bewildering loveliness outside. Only Sansa did, and she longingly looked at the bowers from her lonely spot on the high ledge, nursing dreams of spring and Jon looked at her from _his_ lonely spot at the lakeside, dreaming the same dreams, caring because she did.

* * *

 A few weeks into the fine weather, the toys were all put in a scented cedar chest and brought downstairs where they stayed for a whole two days. On the third morning, they were brought back to their home-but lo! Everything had changed; it seemed, in two nights. The north window overlooking the garden had large steel bars over it, the castle had been removed, and lay concealed under the tablecloth: a sad little structure of cloth and glass and silver-foil. In its stead stood a grander castle, made of ebony with carvings of dragons and star showers on the edges. Its corners were formidable, the moat made of real tree bark and the drawbridge suspended by shining metal chains.

Reigning over it all was a doll the likes of whom none of the toys had ever seen before. She had been made of the purest milk-white porcelain; her hair was a river of molten silver yarn, and her eyes were enamelled violets. Unlike the humble clothing of gauze and tweed the other toys wore, she had on a long beautiful robe of lace and scrollery and she wore an elaborate headdress, a necklace and bracelets of real sapphires and pearls. But her crowning glory was that she was always surrounded by a trio of sandpaper dragons larger than Lady the puppy herself.

An Empress through-and-through.

And just like Arry had predicted, The Dragon Queen knew her worth, and she knew that these ragamuffins of hay and cloth were beneath her station. To her praise, she did not say anything out loud; she was too regal for that, but when it was nightfall, any sound of shouting and play-fighting among the dolls would elicit the subtlest of disapproving glances from her as she sat on her majestic throne, surveying her new kingdom. This made the dolls uncomfortable, except maybe the wildling dolls, who were too far gone to care, but Arry and Lya and the other little ones felt like they were held on an invisible leash by the Queen. Even Tormund and Grenn, who had been beside themselves with excitement for a glimpse of the new Lady of Winterfell, found out that not only was she completely out of their league, but also treated them with the same condescension and frost-nosed apathy as a common man would a stray cat. As if that wasn’t enough those dragons, they too came alive when the moon rose, and no one was safe with those great prowling monsters around. And so, the dolls eventually stopped coming out at night, remaining behind in the shadows of the cupboards to ponder on, and lament the changes in their life. The Moon Lake grew empty and collected a film of dust from misuse. Winterfell became a bleak, desolate place and even the beauty of the garden couldn’t provide any solace, hidden as it was by the great bars- to protect the Queen from thieves and threats.

What did Jon think of all this? To begin with, he’d been very upset. There had been a bubbling resentment within him, directed towards this strange woman, who should suddenly swoop in and make life for him and his friends miserable. Then, as time passed, he grew used to it. For one thing, her dragons meant she needed no protection, and that Jon was free to go off and spend his time alone, which is what he did best, surrounded by nothing but silence. Also, despite her general offhanded demeanour she treated him with the respect he’d craved and been denied since he’d first arrived at Winterfell.

For another, there was the case with Sansa.

Ever since the Dragon Queen had arrived, Sansa had retreated into a secluded spot of the new castle. She was seldom seen during the day, and the other toys seemed to have forgotten about her altogether. She seemed to have faded into oblivion, disappeared altogether, except that she hadn’t really. On some nights, standing at the Watchtower of the new castle, he saw Sansa ribbon her shoes and go dancing on the empty Lake, a lonely star in an inky sky. Seasons had come and come and yet he had not found the courage to ask anything of her, least of all her heart. And all this was would have been good, if it wasn’t the obvious fact that he had fallen helplessly in love with her-Sansa, with her soft Raphaelite curls and silky dress the exact colour of her eyes, Sansa with her crystal-sharp trove of words- _Pirouette, Pas de Deux, Arabesque_. Sansa, whose eyes shone like sea-sapphires when she was speaking of spring.

Jon was in deep, deep water.

* * *

  _I’m scared_ , she’d told him, one day as he mounted guard by the drawbridge, in the wee hours of the morning.

_Scared of?_

_Of her. The Dragon Queen._

_You like her not._

_It is not that. I am scared she has a hold over you._

He had laughed, told her he was his own man-that she needn’t worry about the Dragon Queen or anybody else having any hold over him. She had seemed halfway happy at his words, yet somewhere he felt he was missing something in her unspoken, lingering glances.

He had spoken about it to Tormund.

_Ay, maybe she fancies you._

He nudged his friend. _Come, now_.

_What? Is that so impossible that you shrug it off? Have you never thought of the possibility of being…well, man and-_

_Wife?_ Jon had glanced over at Sansa. _She would be a wife for me_ , he had agreed, _but she is a grand lady and I am only a tin man._

 _If I were a pretty fellow like you_ , Tormund said, _I wouldn’t be asking my woolly mammoth for words. I would be at her chamber casement serenading her, like a true champion._

Jon, while seeing the obvious loopholes of the plan, at played with it at the back of his head. The next morning, when the Dragon Queen emerged into light, he made a great show of kissing her hand, and filling her head with flattery and affectations, all of which seemed to have little effect on her. But out of the corner of his eye, Jon noticed Sansa’s surprised, annoyed, even envious glances flitting back and forth between him and the Queen. And he felt, maybe, just maybe, Tormund was right after all.

* * *

 Then one night, he abandoned his post and went to the castle to confront Sansa.

What would he tell her? He didn’t know. But the silences were killing him, the uncertainties of not knowing, if he was to live and die pining in the throes of unrequited love or if in his destiny lay the purest, sweetest bliss of all.

He didn’t find her, though. He found Arry, lounging in the dark, eyes shining like gems.

“Where is Sansa?”

“They took her off,” Arry said. “To the Under. You know.”

Jon did, and his heart dropped to his toes. The Under was the place toys went to when their lives came to an end, when they were far too worn out to live in Winterfell. And then, from thence, they were thrown into a big fire-pit or sold off. He felt as if he’d been stabbed.

“But she’s perfectly fine!”

“Mayhaps, but the master feels, now with the Dragon Queen, his sister should have no more use of the dancer. He says, _She doesn’t even dance, she is of no use to me_. So they took her.”

 _She dances for me, fool_ , Jon thought, aggravated, upset. _She lives when she’s with me, he is so blind, our master, he cannot see_. _And now I’ve failed to protect her. Yet there is still time enough to redeem myself._ He pulled out his longsword, struck the ground with it. Stared at Arry. “Can you carry a tin soldier on your back?”

“I-yes,” Arry faltered. “Why, where will you go?”

“To bring back the Lady of Winterfell,” Jon said, through gritted teeth. And my wife.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of things:  
> Arry is Arya, I'm sure you know that :) The blue-green mermaids refer to the Manderlys, a really wealthy family in the north, their sigil a silver merman on a blue-green field. (Wylla Manderly from the books is a boss-ass woman) The crannogmen toys are the Reeds, who lived in the swamps of Westeros, in the region known as the Neck. I modelled the richer dolls on the Lannisters and Tyrells.


	4. The Seasons of My Love

They had to wait.

Even at nights, the servants stayed well up into the early dawn, roaming the hallways and hollering; it would have been impossible for Arry to pass undetected, much less with the hazards of carrying a metal man on her back. If they had to rescue Sansa, they would have to ensure safe passage both while leaving the playroom and re-entering.

This, is why they had to bide their time for three days. When the weekend arrived, the Justice and his family, their two cooks, three man-servants, governess and coachman, bolted their doors, locked the gate and left for a Spring Carnival in the next town.

And it was only then that Arry and Jon decided to set out on their endeavour to bring the Winter Queen back.

* * *

Beneath the wooden floors, beneath the lavender and green carpet-nailed to the steps at each corner, beneath kitchen and hallway and five bedrooms, was the Under. It was really the basement, but it was the kind of basement mothers told their children to stay away from- a real nightmare, with boxfuls of broken dolls, dolls missing eyes, teeth, limbs, chunks or even whole heads. Besides there was no light except the great fiery incinerator, the final resort of dolls nobody would buy. It was like walking into a ghost house.

Arry hated every second of it. Jon had convinced her to jump out the casement, squeeze in through a broken pane on the ground floor and scale pipes. But he couldn’t convince her to take him, and in vain did he try to pursue her that a one-legged man would never be able to make it out alive from the horrors of the basement _(“I have done enow' for you and your godforsaken romance! You are a soldier, for heavens’ sake!”)._ Hence, Jon alone went to seek Sansa, and Jon alone entered the Under.

 

It was so dark that he felt temporarily blinded but his eyes eventually grew used to it.  He spotted great towers of wooden crates and boxes, drew in the smell of old fur and mothballs, the crunch of dust and splinters underfoot. Never-ending, that’s how this hundred-foot journey that he’d taken seemed to be. Funny how trivial it must seem to humans and yet for a mere toy, it was a great voyage into an abyss, terrifying even.

_But this is what love does_ , he thought. _It makes man scale mountains, fight lions, slay dragons, and it makes hard tin hearts soft for what can only be theirs if they seek it._

To keep heart, he occupied himself with thoughts of Sansa. He’d bring her back, that much was a given but what about afterwards? The humans couldn’t possibly know about this or there’d be some alarming consequences. No they would have to life in shadows, in secrecy, for the rest of their time, if they were to live.

Suddenly, an epiphany. He smelled something on the air, almost buried under the overpowering, musty soot and fur smells. A delicate scent: strawberries and scented crayons.

_The smell of a dancing-doll who wouldn’t dance._

High up on a tower of wooden footstools, an ornate music box played soft, haunting music, like faint birdsong. Jon lifted his gaze to the box, let it linger there. Instinctively, he knew where he’d find her.

* * *

 It took all his efforts to scale that great mountain. And it was while he was doing so that he realised his whole life had, indeed, been built on a lie. He had never had a true encounter all his life, let alone with the undead or any other nonsense. Something less heroic had cost him a leg. Whatever he’d been before, a brave Lord Commander was not it. This was his first foray into anything dangerous.

The thought almost made him lose spirit. But then he remembered something: _this could be my time to correct my faults and build upon them._ He had a heart, he had a deadly weapon in his hand and he didn’t need two legs.

Even so, when the green-gold-plated side of the box finally came into view, he had all but collapsed. Barely able to breathe, he rapped on the walls with the hilt of his sword, “Sansa!” it felt strange, the music in her name, being swallowed whole by the murk.

No answer.

“Sansa! I want to reply if you’re in there!” and he hated how frail and tremulous his voice sounded.

No answer.

Was he wrong? Did this mean he’d have to climb down and search each and every other box in this gigantic room? So be it.

As it were, he didn’t have to. He’d barely turned when a voice called from within the box, “Jon?”

It was as if all the colours came flooding back within him. For a moment he’d been caught off-guard for she’d never called him by anything but his rank, _and yet here we are._ He ran back to the box, heart pounding. The chirruping music had stopped and he tried, wildly, blindly to scrape open the lid of the box, but after a while, he heard Sansa whisper, “Jon, if that’s really you, I’ll need you to be quieter.” Her voice was trembling.

“Why?”

“I’m…..” she hesitated, her voice barely audible. “I’m not alone in here. There is a creature here… work silently with me.”

He didn’t need to hear anymore, although he was dying to. A task of herculean patience, putting in all your weight on the one leg, and hacking at a rusty old lock with a longsword held in both hands, all while keeping your balance on the edge of the steepest precipice.

Yet, when the lid finally came off after forever, and Sansa fell into his arms sobbing- bruised, and crumpled and worn out and yet inextricably and unequivocally free and his to love, he felt somehow, just somehow, that everything was worth it. He was unable to embrace her back, of course, a tin man’s arms would be a death-grip for a paper woman. But he stroked her hair as gently as he could, noting how it had come undone and tumbled over her shoulders and her waist like an unruly river. But important things first- “Are you unhurt?”

“Yes,” she breathed. He saw with wonder how she seemed to drink him in thirstily with her eyes, the way he used to gaze at her in rapture when she was Lady of Winterfell, and how she clung to him even as he tried to be soft with her. “There is a strange man in that box, Jon, unlike any of the men I’ve ever seen. He looks like the Devil himself. And he has been keeping me prisoner here, he has these birds, evil birds; they keep a watch on me.”

“And he never touched you? He didn’t do anything amiss?” he felt all the old protectiveness swell up in him, the desire to escape somewhere else and live out the rest of his life in peace with only Sansa. He had his hand on the hilt of his sword, but then, he felt Sansa’s soft palm upon his callused metal one and she said, “Nothing worth losing you for.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” Sansa said ardently, her face glowing, “that you are here, and that I have waited for all these days to test the grounds of your feelings for me and mine for you, and I realised something that day when you kissed the Dragon Queen’s arm-that I couldn’t bear it, just couldn’t, for you to love someone else, it would _destroy_ me.”

“Sansa.”

Strange, how it was that despite all the moonlit, rose-covered alcoves he’d imagined as the grand scene of their union, it actually happened on a mountain of footstools, at the mercy of a boogeyman, who’d wake at any moment. Sansa stared at him, and he stared at her, azure blue into cold grey, and she told him quietly, “I’d meant to tell you something before I left, but I didn’t get the chance. Now I do, and I mean to say it without further ado: I think I’ve never loved a thing in the world nearly as I love you.”

He had prepared a dozen different replies to an impassioned plea for love, each more grandiose and ridiculous than the last. But in that most crucial of moments, his tongue wouldn’t convey what his heart was furiously and rapidly expressing: _I have been yours; my heart and soul have been yours, from that first unreal day to the very end._ He would have at least told her he loved her back, but something happened, as something always does just when things seem to be going rose-and-golden. And what happened was this: the strange, flitting, wing-beating, eerie chirping that had permeated the walls of the Under (but had stopped momentarily when Jon had been fiddling with the cage that trapped Sansa) filled the air again, it froze the hearts in them; it seemed to be throbbing, amplified in the very walls of the chamber.

Then opened the lid and out flew the Devil.

He was not the Devil, not really, just a hideous creature, a _very_ hideous one.  Malice twisted his face into disproportionate angles: a strange, half-human, half-bird phantasm with a crescent moon of pale viridian material running down the side of his face in a strip, like rotten skin. But worst of all were his eyes, or rather the absence of them, for there was only the whites and where pupils should have been, all that was visible were two grey-green vertical lines.

This creature, he went by the name Petyr in these regions. He had been bought at a fair several years back but the little boy had been far too scared of the face to grow completely fond of him. Besides, he had the strange habit of popping out of the box in the dead of the night, which had scared all the children in the house, and finally the Justice had decided one evening that mayhaps he was far too grim a toy for innocent little ones. And the next day, he had been sent away, just like Sansa. He was a bogeyman now, a Jack-in-the box who kept vigil over the prisoners of the Under.

Petyr had grown tired of reigning over broken limestone figurines and squeaky dolls that had lost their squeak. He’d been scanning the horizon impatiently for fresh meat, when Sansa had been brought to him, by the servant who’d ferry the broken dolls to the Under wrapped in red tissue.

A king, especially a king of the Dead, is a solitary man and the isolation often makes them behave very unbecomingly. Imagine then, Petyr’s frustration at being cooped up in a silly metal box in the dark when news came to him every day about the grand tidings in the upper realms-about new, beautiful dolls and splendid palaces. He dreamt of owning them all. Not to speak of those cunning little mockingbirds engraved into the walls of his music box, which came alive to whisper words of poison into his ear that he might make the wickedest of decisions. Sansa was beautiful, a surprisingly beautiful thing, with her pink flushed cheeks and graceful bearing and mermaid-blue eyes so it was no surprise that Petyr hoped to break her spirit and then make her his Queen, and the Queen of the Under. Mind you, his idea of a Queen wasn’t a woman who’d rule with him and share the crown, it meant his prisoner, who’d do his bidding and willfully submit to his ignoble desires and wear only the crown of shackles and chains he held.

He was looking at the lovers with his awful slit eyes, flanked by his whispering birds.

“The brave knight comes to rescue the lovely maiden,” he said, his voice dripping with nasally sweetness, each syllable bouncing off its predecessor. “And then they embrace, then they’re happy…or are they?”

Jon tried to hustle Sansa behind him, but she stayed her ground. Through gritted teeth, she told him, “I wouldn’t be your queen, Petyr. That cage is no place for a Queen. And your messengers are vile. I hear them, the tales, the twisted dreams they help you weave…..”

_How hurtful_ , sang a small blue bird. _The lady would accuse us_.

_Truly terrible_ , sang another, with plum feathers. _When all we do is have her best interests at heart._

“Now, now, my little ones,” Petyr admonished, sounding as gentle as he was truly foul. Turning to Sansa, he said, “Dearest, have I not treated you well? You are very unkind to go running back into the arms of your one-legged prince and spurn your king so. I’d make you Queen, you know, you are a special creature…”

“As to that Petyr,” Sansa cried, while Jon stood his ground, fighting to keep his rage in check, “I agree he has lost a limb but then again, he hasn’t traded his soul yet. Unlike a so-called King I could name.”

“You are too cruel, my beloved. Tell me this-did he ever love you while you were his? Tell you how beautiful you are, everyday, like any man worthy of a splendid thing like you would, like I do?-there!” seeing Sansa shudder at his words-“he hasn’t, has he? And yet, you’d be with him?!”

Jon flinched; the words, while hurtful weren’t wholly untrue. He had pushed Sansa away more times than he could remember, and had made an open show of his courting the Dragon Queen. He felt sick to the pit.

And yet Sansa spoke, and she spoke coldly and passionlessly-“I was free with Jon, I always am! You, you are a miserable wretch who thrives off your strange and lustful fetishes for people who’d never be yours. You shouldn’t presume to teach me, for I feel more pity than hatred for you.”

_What unsympathetic ramblings_! –said a small rose-feathered fiend. _For a woman, so much coldness, so unexpected, so unwelcoming!_ Petyr was still smiling, and Jon didn’t like his smile, not one bit. When he spoke again, his voice was softer still, but this time it had a knife-sharp edge to it:

“And Jon will be yours? And Winterfell? My little princess, your home is gone, your place freezes in the snow while your lands, and your crown and your knight are taken away from you by the beautiful Dragon Queen. Stay with me and you’ll be a Queen to a much larger kingdom, yes, and you’ll have riches beyond what your Queen would ever dream of. You’ll bed in topaz and bathe in a sea of sapphires. I’ll set on your head a crown of the purest rose gold, and bring you bouquets of ruby roses on diamond stems. Your palace shall be flanked by silver trees bearing emerald fruit.”

Sansa was very rigid and very quiet. Jon knew, and it didn’t help the knowledge, but even so, he _just knew_ , that she was, for a moment, weighing on Petyr’s words, really considering them. He saw her walk towards the creature he despised, who’d defeated him in the most insidious way possible and he thought, this is it, then. The end of an old way for me. He was thankful Arry and Tormund weren’t here to see his disgrace.

That is until, before his very eyes, he saw Sansa lash out with full force at Petyr, and not just the barbs of words, but an actual, real force-of soft hands grown hard with suppressed pain- that sent him keeling over to the bottom of the box. The birds were around, twittering in the alarm of the unforeseen, but Sansa mercilessly slammed the lid of the box shut and before she did it, Jon heard her say in tones of hard frost-“I’m sorry Petyr, but gold crowns would only weigh paper dolls like me down, I choose my winter diadem.”

Then she grabbed Jon’s hand and they were scrambling down the mountain breathlessly, in a frenzy. They ran (Sansa leading, slightly dragging Jon) until they were at the very gate of the Under, where they paused to catch their breath, half-laughing with hysteria, and then Jon spun around Sansa and looked her full in the face to ask her the question that would plague him to the death if he bottled it within-

“Did you really mean all that you said before, Sansa? About us?”

She had held him fondly, but on seeing his anxious expression, playfully asked, “Why, you do not believe me?”

“I want to, dearest, but you had wanted a crown so badly and all I can give you is a life full of uncertainty in the place you hated. I have nothing to offer- neither ruby roses nor sapphire baths, not even a spangle moon.”

“Jon, Jon, look at me. I do not crave those silly trinkets anymore! I had been a mercenary fool to think and act the way I did. When I was in that place…” she trailed off, swallowed what looked like a sob and carried on, “I realised how much I missed my old life. Not just the palace but Arry and Lya and even the Wildling dolls-they were madcap, yes, but they were our friends! - and we had stood united in the happiest time of my life.”

A breath, and then: “And I missed you, Jon. I missed my dear tin soldier with his curls and his grey eyes. I missed your steadfast love for me. I missed all of you. Then I had you back and I couldn’t lose you, and I _won’t_. That creature in there, I didn’t tell you everything about him, he did some things to me, horrible things. I don’t want to go back…..”

He cut her short, closing her words with his mouth.

It was the briefest of kisses, but it was full of the exquisite tenderness of love after almost losing the person he cherished the most. Sansa responded too, drawing on his sharp jaw with her finger, tracing a law along the chiseled angle of his cheekbones. She laid butterfly-delicate kisses on his closed eyes, breathing him in, his cold skin and warm hands. Absurdly, Jon wondered how they knew what to do to come alive in each other’s arms even if they’d never done this before. So he broke off, telling her, “Come with me.”

“Where to?”

“When we escape, I’ll take you with me. There can be no life for us here, for fate seems to keep driving us apart. I don’t know how far we’ll make it, but for your sake I’ll try. I can promise you of no protection but my own.”

No fireworks lit up the sky; no star showers rained down from the heavens, no flowers bloomed at their feet. But when Sansa looked up, her blue eyes sparkling with a light not quite earthly, and said “It’s all I need, Lord Commander” closing in all space between them again, it seemed all things good and wonderful happened together, at once, in a crescendo of colours, in a blaze of glory.

And all was well, again.

* * *

“Arry told me about your departure.”

She didn’t face him but her shoulders were rigid, and her voice was surprisingly mellow for a woman of her temperament. Jon had dreaded visiting her, since his return from the Under last night (all his time spent in seeing to it that Sansa was well-cared for and safe, and in nursing his own damn leg which had been stinging like a hundred bees since the run) but then Grenn told him that his absence had been noted and that it would be wisest to go and clear things up.

So here he was, standing on a high tower, preparing to be reproached by the mighty Dragon Queen.

Thus far, though, nothing reproachful had come barreling his way. The Queen had always treated him with at least a modicum of respect, and even today, when his reckless pursuits could have endangered the double lives of the dolls, she didn’t make any harsh remark. All she said was, “That was foolhardy.”

“I agree, Your Grace. But I love her and she was-”

With a flick of a jeweled hand, she silenced him. “I asked neither for your opinion, nor your justification, Jon. What you did might have proved to be the undoing of not just yourself or Arry but all the toys here.”

He bowed his head. _I’d do it again if it meant I could throttle the life out of Petyr._

Pausing by his side, and placing a hand upon his shoulder, the Queen said “And yet, a deed not without the badge of courage. To fight for one’s love, unfortunately that is a thing I am yet to feel. I do realise, however what you must have been going through. I want to help you, Jon.”

He looked up at her, surprised, grateful at this unexpected ally. “You will, my Queen?”

“Indeed I will,” she smiled, and her features looked softer, less severe. “Petyr’s birds will be out looking for you. I plan on granting both Sansa and you sanctuary in my castle till the right moment. Once the imminent threat is gone, I’ll help you escape. My dragons will keep unforeseen predators away.”

“This is a great kindness.”

“I do it,” she said, a little more sternly, “not out of gentleness towards you. The people here hate me, but I’ve been made a Queen against my will, and come what may, I must reign here till my death. An act of goodwill towards two beloved people will make them see me in a positive light, not as a foreign invader.”

“And why are you telling me all this?”

“Because, when you leave, I want you to remember that there was a Dragon Queen who made a friend of you. Your many courtesies have not been wasted on me Jon, though I suspect they were all in jest to catch the pretty eye of your beloved. I intend to spend my time here making enemies, not friends. Remember that.”

“I will, your Grace.” A command really that he and Sansa might get their people to rally for her. A threat, a very thinly veiled threat disguised as an olive branch, but a threat all the same.

Yet, Jon took the olive branch as it came. She was right, he needed to spend his time making friends, not foes, and Sansa would be safe under the protection of that powerful Queen until Petyr was convinced they’d left.

Ahead of him lay the future, a gaping burning question mark.

At least his Lady of Winter was in it with him.

* * *

 Summer, the blaze of the sun upon the towers of the fort. A cooling in the skin. The days clear and pleasant, as viewed through the higher casements. Glorious sunsets, blood-orange, liquid-gold, chrysoprase green colouring the walls. The play of light in Sansa’s silken hair, spilling over his face when she’d swoop in like a playful robin and whisper into his ear: _I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunrise in her hair._ Dappled chiaroscuro in the secret rooms and passages of the wooden fort where they lived and laughed and loved, all in hiding. The hum of the dragonflies in the curtains coming alive. Fruits ripening and falling to the windowsill bursting, spreading rich juicy fragrances in the air. The stomp of the children in the playroom, coming in only to grab a toy, a bear, a wooden sword and racing out again. Jewelled shimmers of the Queen’s robes as she paced in the rooms above them, surveying her kingdom. Sometimes a shiver in a papier-mâché spine at a harsh metal kiss.

Then summer again.

* * *

Some of their friends came over to visit them in the secret chambers, only on an hour fixed by the Queen, in the dead of night. Arry brought them news: Petyr had started losing hope, his little birds appearing less and less at random corners. Lya brought them new clothes, discarded from the richer dolls of the nursery who got sets of fresh garb every month, clothes which Jon rejected and Sansa who had a taste for pretty things, most graciously accepted. Deep blue on Sansa, making her eyes shine brighter, like a dryad in a mountain stream. In the red-orange glory of autumn, Sansa was at her brilliant best. _I loved a maid as red as autumn, with sunset in her hair._

Bliss, while it lasted.

* * *

 The only time they could be themselves again, not lovers in hiding, but just Jon and Sansa, was at twilight, when the household was at work and the dolls were yet to emerge. Then Jon and Sansa escaped to a hidden alcove on Arry’s back from where they had access to a skylight which led them to the roof, with nothing between them and the sky. It was an enchanting place and it overlooked the lush mountain forests and the little town, awash in purple and dark ink, shining as if the world was made of amethysts and stars.

* * *

“Don’t be too late; I’ll be around in an hour. Remember the kitchen windows have a view of the roof, so be careful.”

“We will, darling,” Sansa kissed the top of Arry’s head, and the little kitten accepted it with grumpy affection. “Well, I’ll leave the lovebirds now.”

“Have fun on your prowl,” Jon called after her, to which she hissed, making him laugh.

Today was one of those glorious twilights that artists would die for: an otherworldly purple sky while the valley was enveloped in a purplish mist too. Sansa wore her deep blue dress, and her hair was braided. The braids had been made by the newest addition to the playroom, Shireen, a sweet-tempered baby doll with a half-cracked face, who always wore a tiara of antlers. Sansa had grown fond of her as she had grown fond of anything her heart could take, the old bears and even the Wildlings and the Sandpaper dragons. Everything became a puppy as gentle as Lady on Sansa’s touch, he thought feeling giddy, light-headed with adoration.

“Dance with me.” Ah, the silvery, tinkly laugh.

“I have two left feet, Sansa,” he told her. “And I lost one.”

She pressed her rosebud lips together, but a giggle escaped and then he snorted hideously and she began to laugh. “Very well. Watch me, and get jealous.”

Sansa glided off into the backdrop of the stars, her blue skirts swishing out around her, light and smooth and elegant. He remembered how he’d called her a lonely star in those days when she’d go off and dance by herself in the dark. Now, she was Lucida, the brightest of all, and he was a drunken, drowning sailor, a bewitched stargazer who couldn’t fathom a life apart from her.

It was now or never.

Sansa stopped suddenly, dove in mid-flight and spun around, “You’re distracted. You missed my near-perfect spin.”

“I cannot help it. I was admiring the way your eyes were glimmering. You are so achingly beautiful.”

“I’d be flattered, except I’m not-no, don’t do that,” Sansa protested, as he moved to her and wrapped his arm around her waist, “I cannot speak with you when you get all flustered. Tell me when are we to leave this place? I cannot wait any longer.”

“Truth be told, nor I. But it is essential-”

“For my safety, yes, I know! Yet, hiding like this, in our very home, Jon-”

“It makes your breathe catch in your throat.”

Sansa frowned. Was this foolish lover of hers making light of her worries again? She was about to say something, when Jon shuffled out of her arms, and made the strangest gesture. He struck the ground with the longsword and seemed to bow slightly.

“Oh, what are you doing?”

“You need a reason to stay, and I’m giving you one. I’m asking you to marry me.”

Sansa’s mouth opened so wide it looked terribly funny, but Jon quickly added, “If you say no, I’m going to mope all day and weep on Tormund’s shoulder. For the sake of his-and my-sanity, say yes.”

“I was m-” Sansa stuttered. What did he say? What was she going to say? She’d lost all sanity. “Yes,” she blurted, her words an incoherent mess. He started up joyfully, going to take her hand. “Yes!”-this time it came out stronger and then they reached for each other and were a happy blur against the large, brilliant white moon and the ever-shifting hyacinth hues of the evening skies. _I loved a maid as white as winter, with moonglow in her hair._

* * *

The Dragon Queen granted them her blessing. Shireen and Lya were overjoyed, Arry not so much, “Now they’ll be lovering all over the place and we’ll have to scoot.”

“Ay- and you shall weep when we leave the house,” Jon told her.

“Nonsense,” said Arry, who had already marked a lonely spot in an old kitchen cabinet where she could bawl her eyes out undetected.

“You’ll find someone to love too,” Sansa told her.

“They don’t make cats this handsome these days.”

* * *

At night Sansa was asleep in her chamber. Jon patrolled the hallway, insomniac as he was. He approached the drawbridge, climbed to the old Watchtower.

Someone was waiting there for him. Something. A little bird. Bearing a whisper on the wind.

_Petyr sends the to-be-weds his best wishes. He says he has thought up of a wedding gift, unlike any others. You must be excited, Lord Commander._

In a flash of bright red wings, it was gone.

* * *

 


	5. The Ironborn

It was winter. Again.

“There’ll be heavy snow this year,” Shireen told Jon, as she fastened his cloak. “Blizzards. It’ll get bone-frost chilly here.”

“It is always cold. A little bit more shouldn’t harm us.”

Shireen smiled, humoring him, reassuring herself.

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.”

“Keep Sansa happy.”

“I will.”

“If you don’t Arry says she’ll hunt you out and disembowel you.”

“Strongly worded.”

Shireen almost laughed, and then controlled herself. “We are joking, but this is no small matter. There are evils out there Jon, unfathomable ones. Would you be able to brave them alone? They say winter is coming.”

“Winter is already here.” Jon said. "It was winter when we came here, when I first met her. It is a good omen, Shireen, don’t you worry.”

He carried in his head nightmares of a crescent-shaped scar and twittering birds.

 _Be brave, soldier_.

* * *

It did snow, although just a light drizzle, the kind which made all things look magical and clean again, which washed away the brown slush and the last detritus of fall.

Jon stood at the doorway to the fort, a lone figure, longsword in hand; wearing his wedding garb of dark blue and black, watching the gardens fill with winter. Lovely were the flowers-carnations and narcissus and of course the wealth of roses-that framed the walls and crept in through the bars of the open windows.

Lovelier still was his wife-to-be, inside the fort being dolled up, literally so, by all her friends. He had caught a glimpse of her earlier ( _you fool, it is bad luck to gaze upon a bride before she is to be wed_ , the Queen had told him imperiously) and she was beautiful as the first snowfall itself, with her glossy auburn hair and berry-soft cheeks. She wore a long dress, one from the pile of rejects of the Nursery Royals, a white one spangled with shimmering stars, quite like her old dancing garb in its flare.

Jon sighed in contentment. Ah, contentment, it was a great word. One Jon had thought he’d never associate with himself but a lot of things had changed since then. He’d found home within the halls of this little room. And he’d found love too.

His reveries were broken when he noticed a most enchanting sight outside the window. Just within reach of the sill, on a bough heavy with frost, bloomed a brilliant, perfect blue rose. A blue so bright it made the sky look faded and bleak. Just like Sansa’s eyes,

It would look enchanting against her hair, he thought. He remembered she’d lost her dancing crown. _I cannot give her the crown but I can give her the first blue rose of winter. This I can and must do._

He never noticed the little bird flitting in the shadows of the curtains as he made his way to the windowsill.

The branch bent easily when he pulled it towards himself. He leaned over, more, a bit more, until he was at the very precipice. It was only then that he realised something was not quite right about the rose, its colour seemed too garish to be true, the petals looked unnatural.

Before he could ponder anymore, the ledge on which he stood, gave way.

Or maybe he was pushed. He wouldn’t remember. What he would remember though, would be the sickening crunch as he fell to the hard ground, his back doubling over in pain, the force of the fall causing his good leg to dent at the edge. He would remember, sprawling on the snow, in blinding pain, his longsword broken, dislodged from his hand, lost forever. Thinking frantically of his lover, waiting for him far, far above, blissfully unaware.

Most of all though, this is what he would remember, just before passing out: at a window pane much beneath the playroom, a face, half-hidden by the curtains. Half-man, half-bird.  A smile of contentment (ah, that word!), a crescent scar.

Then, blessed darkness.

* * *

Sansa waited, patiently, within the castle, helmed by the other toys. As the sun began making its afternoon crawl, however, she began to feel impatient. Where was Jon? She’d assumed he’d taken a quick trip to go see the rest of his brothers on the other floor. She turned to Tormund, looking at him with inquisitive blue eyes. He obeyed wordlessly, slipping out of the playroom, Val in tow.

When he returned a while later, his face was enough to tell the tale.

“How?” Sansa asked him. He shook his head. Val interjected, “There was no sign of him m’lady. He never did go to them. His brothers didn’t see him, to begin with.”

“That is unchivalrous,” spoke the Dragon Queen, as she pinned an ornamental feather to Sansa’s hair.

“No,” Sansa cut her off harshly. She didn’t mean to be rude, but the Queen’s words rustled within her uncertainty, which made her question herself, think things about Jon she’d rather not. _I am not sure any more, and not being sure makes my mind weak and impressionable._

 “Maybe he left for a walk. To clear his nerves,” suggested Maege. “Lots of men, I heard the humans say, get frazzled on the day of their wedding.”

_Not Jon, no. Jon wasn’t a human. He was steadfast and he was strong. He knew how important this was to her._

“My lady we’ll search for him, until it gets dark,” Pyp told her. “We’ll find him.”

“And I’ll bring out my dragons,” the Queen said, frowning slightly. “Do you suspect foul play, Sansa?”

She didn’t know. And right now, she wasn’t even sure if she wanted to. As she ran her fingers through her hair, one of the blue bird feathers that the Queen had delicately arranged around her crown came loose and fell to the ground. She picked it up, placing it gently on her palm like some precious jewel.

“Look,” said old bear Jeor. “It’s snowing. Winter is here.”

A strange, unknown bird of ice spread its wings of doubt and dug its talons of fear into Sansa’s cold little heart.

* * *

When he woke, it was a new world.

The world had been so brown and sad before he closed his eyes. Now, it shone a dazzling, sparkling white, white so bright it hurt the eyes. Five-pointed flakes drifted down like ice-fairies onto the earth. Great mounds of snow weighted down the trees in the garden. Everything was beautiful and calm and sheathed in snow.

He, on the other hand, looked a complete shipwreck.

Worse still, there was someone or something breathing down his back. Something in the grass.

Painfully he managed to roll over and came face-to-face with a large, heart-shaped pink blob. Behind the blob, two large yellow eyes and a face and body and tail covered with the softest grey fur. It was Lady, the household puppy, and she’d found Jon whilst playing in the snow. She prodded him gently with her nose.

 _I could’ve done worse_. Lady was a sweet thing. She wouldn’t harm him. The puppy opened her jaws very wide and clamped them down on him, lifting him from the snow. Her teeth weren’t sharp enough to harm him, albeit they pierced through his clothes all the same. Lady carried Jon out of the mush and bowers, for which he was grateful, but then he saw she made straight for the garden gates and he knew he was about to go from bad to worse.

Lady carried him to a corner, her own special corner no doubt and began to burrow furiously. _I’ll be buried alive in the snow. What an adieu._

“Lady, darling! To me!”

The lady of the house was calling for the puppy from the porch. Lady turned around joyfully, dropping Jon at the base of the gate, and scampering back to her warm quarters. Jon desperately wanted to raise an alarm, do anything to prove he was there, but he was so small, and the deluge was so huge that his voice would be smothered before he even uttered a word.

Suddenly, he was alone again.

* * *

“Think of the best.”

“I cannot. At best, I can only imagine that he ran away because he loved another or because he craved freedom, and now he is lost to me, but he has found himself.”

“That’s the best?” Shireen asked incredulously. “Oh, Sansa, don’t tell me if you mustn’t, but what then, is your worst?”

Sansa paused. She swallowed.  “I fear, I very much fear that our stay here hadn’t been a secret like we thought. I fear we had been found by someone.”

“None of us here would betray you. Nobody hates you, here anyway. Not even the Queen- and she dislikes most of us!”

“No, I agree with you.” Sansa said. “But the world doesn’t end here. I know of one person, who’d do anything, to watch us burn. And I intend to stop him.”

* * *

“Halloo, what is this?”

Jon blinked into the light. Somebody was staring at him.

“A tin soldier!”came a high-pitched squeak.

“Yes,” said the first voice, a feminine one, though harsh at the edges. “It is a tin soldier. Mighty fine one too. Pick ‘im up brother.”

Once the snow was dusted off him, he came face to face with a group of the shabbiest, scrawniest children he’d ever seen. The two who’d retrieved him by poking a stick around in the snow looked something alike, brother and sister, thin and black haired, and dark-eyed. Rapscallions, child-rogues, in scraps of cloth passing off as garb, with mud on their knees and snow on their shoulders, who had, Jon could tell, not seen a good meal or a warm fire all their lives, from the way their eyes gleamed when they looked at the Justice’s house.

“Ay, ‘e is the brat’s, ain’t ‘e?” asked one of the children. “Look at ‘im, all dandy in cloak and boot.”

“He has only one leg,” noted another. “He broke the other in the snow, methinks.”

The girl looked at Jon carefully, dragging the edge of a dirt-coated nail against his body. “You a pretty lad,” she told him, although as Jon knew, she never expected him to hear. “Y’know your master was a right little prick. Never did allow us to enter ‘is fine house, looked down at us like we were dogs o’ the street, made fun o’ our way o’ life because our grandfathers and fathers weren’t rollin’ in money like ‘is does.”

Jon listened. All this was news to him, but it didn’t really affect him the way he should’ve, because unlike before, he wasn’t a young soldier with grand delusions of greatness. He knew of the evil that lurked in every man. The unerring desire to control, to destroy what they couldn’t.

“Let’s stick a needle in ‘im and put him back on the porch. Like a sign.”

“Na, then e’d know it were us, and kick a fuss.” She turned her attention back to Jon, and the soldier thought she looked completely deranged. “Let’s do things….our way.”

“You don’t….don’t mean the drowning do you?”asked her shrimp of her brother.

Her teeth gleamed when she smiled. “I mean the drowning.”

* * *

 “Sansa, something awful has happened!”

The ballerina looked from where she was sitting, flanked by the toys, at the edge of the Moon Lake. “Arry?”

It wasn’t the kitten, but Val who stepped up to her. “We found this in the snow. My lady, we are so sorry.”

Sansa stared sightlessly at the thing the Wildling princess had laid at her feet. It was Jon’s longsword, the pommel cracked, filled with snow. She looked at Tormund and Arry.

“I’m going to the Under. You may or not may not accompany me. I won’t force you. But do not go searching for me, search for Jon instead, do not lose heart. There are debts to pay.”

Saying so, the bride-who’d never be a bride-stood up, and with a rustle of skirts, left the lakeside. Arry caught a glimpse of her face as she passed. She’d give anything to not be her enemy then.

* * *

“What was that chant you made?”

The girl was clearly the leader. In the past half-an-hour, if Jon had learnt anything, it was that the rapscallions listened to every command that fell from her mouth. She’d asked them to etch her name under Jon’s feet, “as a sign of loyalty” and they did. Jon had been in wild pain from the brand they used to imprint a mark on his soles, for the burn had seared straight through his boots, and reminded him of his original enemy, the fire. Then she’d asked them to get “th’ warship” and they did. Jon almost laughed hysterically when he saw the warship, a paper boat, with a weed draped around it like a festoon.

“First let’s take ’im to the altar.”

He was put in the boat, and carried out into the town. It was just like Jon had envisioned it’d be: large and colourful, the houses done up in gingerbread and rainbow hues and curlicues, flowers dripping in bunches from marble balconies, wagons on the street, shops filled with goods beyond anybody’s dreams, orchards in knee-deep snow. To him, though, most of it seemed like a senseless blur of colours and sounds. He had hoped to see the new world with Sansa, but without her, it was all overwhelmingly fearsome. He thought of Sansa, poor Sansa, still in her wedding dress, probably in tears, and some of the old ache leaked in through his courage.

They raced each other, the children did, squealing and shouting, till they reached a canal at the north edge of the town, where the forest began. And now the children bent to the asphalt on the street, smeared soot and dirt on their heads and began chanting like some occult coven: “ _Let your servant be born again, from th’ sea, as you were_.”

“Bless him with salt,” said the girl sprinkling sawdust on his head.

“Bless him with steel,” said her brother setting the boat in the water.

“Bless him with sea,” the boat was pushed off.

And suddenly, Jon was off, at the mercy of a paper boat, speeding into the unknown, while his tormentors cackled like the maniacs that they were soot dripping down the bridges of their noses.

* * *

Just like Sansa had imagined, the sound of the window pane crashing ( _thank you, Tormund)_ brought the maid running upstairs. She was so busy collecting the shards of shattered glass ( _Sweet lord, these stray cats bring nothing but trouble_ ) that it took quite a bit of time before she noticed the little paper doll lying on the ground, dressed in floating white.

“Why if it ain’t that rag doll the little master had me throw away!” she picked up Sansa, who was as still as a summer sky. “Which fool brought her up again?”

The maid took the doll down the stairs again. Personally if you ask me, the maid harboured within her a query as to why anybody would throw a doll as beautiful as this into the basement. Perhaps, if the maid had a daughter, the story would’ve taken a very different turn. But she didn’t, you see, and it was for the better. Or maybe worse.

* * *

 Once, again, the Under. The fusty smell of decay.

Once again, an old music box, the unbearable chirp of winged heralds of evil.

“It is great to have you back, my lady,” leered Petyr. Sansa couldn’t bear to look at his face, yet she did. “You look even more alarmingly beautiful than the last time we met.”

She said nothing.

“I was so sorry to hear about your….recent troubles.”

“How did you know?” she kept her voice low.

“My lady, we both know each other better than that- don’t we? My messengers, they are everywhere.”

“Your messengers- or your spies?” _You took the one thing I loved and you ripped my heart away._ What happened to Jon?”

“Ah. Well, young men. Marriage flusters them. Especially when the bride is a woman much greater than him in all things, virtues and…..” his eyes raked over her body, “ _beauty.”_

“Do you think I’m beautiful?”

“Only a fool wouldn’t. Your Jon, he had his faults, but he did love you something true. But no one could love you as I would, if you became my queen. I reiterate my offer, and this time I hope you’ll treat me with greater kindness. I have yet to recover from the blow you gave last time-”

Like a direwolf hunting at its prey, Sansa ripped down her veil, and pulled out the longsword, the last remainder of Jon’s existence in her life. Before Petyr could exclaim, before she herself had time to look back and check on her own harshness, she rammed the blade into the socket of his eyes and then at the little spring which coiled round his evil heart. She stabbed him, as he screamed, first for mercy, then incoherently, in pain. When she’d made sure the wounds were deep and fatal, she stood back shaking and she said, “ _You._ You took away all my hopes of happiness. You stole me of my love. I knew it was you. You dare accuse Jon of being false, but your words are no truer than quicksand. _I loathe you_. I’d sooner love the Devil than be your Queen.”

“Sansa-” gasped the dying enemy. She bent over, pulled his face up with the broken hilt of the sword.

“Consider yourself, blessed, Petyr. It’s not every day that a man gets to die in the arms of the woman he loves, whom he’d make his queen. And I have just this to say: I’m grateful that even in his dying moments; my nemesis should only sing my beauty.”

The light died out of the creature’s eyes. Sansa stood staring, breathing, and comprehending the enormity of what she’d done. Then, when the first wave had passed, she knelt down and wept. For herself, and even for Petyr.

But mostly, mostly for Jon.

* * *

As for Jon.

He started out quite calmly for a man suffering such a predicament as to be shipped on a paper boat down the Canal of Unknown. A little angered yes, but not altogether harried.

But when the current took up, and the soldier glimpsed ahead of him, what looked to be a long, dark tunnel, he knew things weren’t going to be nearly as smooth-sailing as he’d thought.

At the head of the tunnel, he was accosted by the Tickler, an old, ugly rat. “I’m the Tickler,” he said. “I keep guard here, and collect the gold. Where’s yours, pretty lad?”

Jon knew the custom of collecting gold at checkpoints but he was nothing less than a pauper now. “Alas sir, (for you see, even rats deserve all the respect, even gold-swindling checkpoint rats) I have none.”

The rat was about to retort sharply, but a ferocious current suddenly rocked the boat, and with an enormous heave, it lurched Jon away from his interrogator. The tickler roared, “Stop him!” ( _To whom? His brethren hiding in the grass? Or to the current?_ Either way, it would come back later to Jon that it was ridiculous, how mice and men lost their heads over a bit of gold.) But the boat was far gone, and Jon was launched into darkness, just as he’d been at the morn, only this time he had his eyes open and in full consciousness.

On either side of him, water roared. Torrents of water, green and lathered with white foam, slapped at the sides of the boat, drenched him to bits. The boat was rocking like a baby’s cradle. He could see a precipice, and for him it was nothing short of a waterfall. He tried to stand straighter, be braver, but there was no time, the boat came crashing down the edge, and Jon was knocked off into the water.

Jon had feared depths and drowning, though not as much as fire.  But now that he was sinking deeper in the deep blue water, he realised _oh, it was lovely_. He watched as he passed through all the layers of darkening blue, like all the shades in a child’s paint box-turquoise, teal, aquamarine, royal blue, midnight blue, ink, darker and darker, not scared, simply stunned at the intensity of colour. The blue reminded him of Sansa though, and he remembered he’d never see his lovely, laughing, dancing ladylove again. He remembered a song, a song from many nights before, that his brothers and he would sing as they sat round the campfire,

“ _Brave soldier, never ever,_

 _Even though your death is near_...”

He had forgotten the rest of the verses, but for Sansa’s sake he hoped, he’d die with a song and not a plea in his heart. Love was a lot like drowning too, it would take your breath away, make you rush headlong, clinging to the last reeds of the sanity you’d eventually lose hold of, before giving in.

He didn’t get to mull too long on what would and could happen to him, just as the water was beginning to take its effect on him, darkness swallowed him whole again.

A big, black fish, with fins like jet, had gulped down the soldier. Whole.

* * *

 

 

 


	6. Tin, Paper, Snow

_Darkness. Pitch-black. Tossing and turning. The deep grumblings of underwater._

Slowly, Jon came to terms with his surroundings. And he remembered what had happened. Just before he thought he’d sink to his watery death, something had enveloped him in black. The next thing he knew he was being shoved around in a large cave, the walls of which were white and red and had a fleshy feel.

He was inside a fish. Inside a fish belly. The thought was so stupendous; it would have been laughable except now he truly had no point of return. Exploring around, he discovered it was a fish of varied tastes-among other things its belly had an insole of a lady’s shoe, a diamond ring and pellets of medicine.

There were small spiny projections round the inside of the belly. He pulled on one to alert the fish, to make it uncomfortable enough to perhaps vomit him out. But to his horror, the fish merely rolled sideways, and he was thrown against its stomach wall with a sickly thud.

“Well that should serve you right.”

 _Did the_ …. _did the fish just talk_? Jon wondered if he’d been in pain for so long that he was beginning to hallucinate the ridiculous. Almost as if it could read his mind, the fish said, “I have known far too many men of tin and wood all my life to know just how to deal with your lot. You come roaring with your little sabres and silly battle-cries but a day or two in the dark and it kills the warrior in you and shows for who you truly are: a mewling child.”

“I am not a mewling child,” Jon said defensively. “I have no sabre of my own, nor battle-cry, and this day alone I was jilted off from my wedding, tricked into taking a great fall by my worst foe, was humiliated by a rag-tag street gang, put on a boat, chased by a rat, nearly drowned and swallowed by a fish.”

It laughed- the fish. “You story is truly sorrowful. By the way, did you say wedding?”

“I did. I was to be married today morning. It’s been a series of mishaps since then.”

“Weddings give me the shivers. Men swoop down into the river and haul off whole schools of my kind.”

Jon sighed.

* * *

 

As it turned out though, his adventures were to end very soon.

After he had been nearly sick churning about in the fish-guts, there was an abrupt, terrifying jerk which roiled up everything around him.

Tin and wood, the fish knew well. Iron hooks, not so much.

* * *

 

 “Well, would you look at that?”

Light, again. Air, again. The smell of old wood, the aroma of roasting meat, melting caramel.

Jon was in a kitchen.

The cook was laughing. “Would you ever? Ain’t he the same bloke the little master was parading about last winter? Back to old soil again, lad?”

Fate is truly great. It can make a man who never rode a ship all his life, to board just the one that should drown. It can make a hero reach an island just in time to slay a monster. For Jon, fate reared its head thus: he found himself in the kitchen of the old house. The Blackfish that had swallowed him whole had been netted and brought to the Justice's place, a good catch. Now it lay, sliced open, all around him, in shreds of black and silvery-pink.

Back home, if he could call it that.

His first thought was: _Sansa. She is here too._

_And what of her? Was she unhurt? Had she seen many adventures too? Was she angry with him? Disappointed, perhaps._

“Look, now he has lost the other leg, too. A mere stump.”

And then the dreaded words: “Better toss him in the fire, and be done with it. The child will never do with a broken doll, you know how things are.”

* * *

Why had he feared the fire? When the incinerator was opened and the flames took life, Jon felt their hot tongues upon him, and he felt nothing, no pain, no fear, no yearning.

It was only after you had faced something and survived the ordeal, that you realised it wasn’t all that frightening after all. If someone were to tell Jon even a month ago that he’d have drowned and fallen and lived to tell the tale, he’d have laughed and shrugged it off as a madman’s folly. But he had. He had always found love to be the greatest chink in a soldier’s armour, a fatal chink at that, but he had lived, and it had made me better and a braver man.

“Jon?”

She was there. At first he thought it was a dream but then she took his hand and _it was real, she was real, Sansa was here, beside him, heavens help._

“Sansa, you….who put you here? Where’s Petyr? How-”

 “Petyr is dead.”

“But how? How long _have_ I been gone?”

She silenced him. “We have gotten past all that.”

It was true. Why did Petyr matter in all of this? He reached for her, but his hand could scarcely touch her. Then she rose herself, and walked over to him and placed her arms around him.

“We’ll go into this together,” she told him. “You and me, into the fire.”

“You and me.” He understood, he understood everything. It was the one, and only the one way they’d be allowed to be together, untouched, and unspoiled and together.

The fire was licking away at both of them, hot so hot, it was near impossible to inhale. His hands began to melt and her hair too, and very soon no one could say where he began and she ended, the last and most final, most fulfilling embrace of all. The flames rose higher and he saw Sansa’s eyes blaze as she kissed him, blaze like the last, glaring spark of a meteor streaking the heavens, and when he kissed her back, he was blazing too.

The flames danced as high as a dream in a million, billion colours- scarlet, orange, purple, even blue, casting rich shimmering shadows on their faces and their hands and their hair. He steadied himself, stood upright, held onto her for dear life. "Would that we were made of glass," he thought. "Tin doesn't do well here. Nor paper."

Higher and higher, the flames rose, crackling, singing.

 _Tin, Paper, Snow,_ they whispered.

_It's time to let her go._

He didn’t.

* * *

And we are nearly at the end of this story, but not quite, because this strange tale of the tin man and his paper love has an even stranger ending. You see, in the morning, as the maid was sweeping the hearth, she found a most peculiar little thing, half-hidden, sparkling in the soot of the incinerator.

A tin heart, fused together, with a  half-charred spangle one.

The heart eventually went to the Dragon Queen’s fort, and became her crest. A living, glorious emblem in the kingdom of Always Winter, of the Lord and the Lady who burned for their love.

You can still hear them sometimes, if you were to tiptoe past the playroom at night. Skating on the Moon Lake, at night, free, unbridled, happy.

Just don’t open the door.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was HUGE. Sorry. I intended for it to be a oneshot but well, my head kept making excuses to lengthen the stuff.  
> I tried not to let Dany be bashed, although she does have a grey streak. Initially my idea had been to make Ramsay the bogeyman but somehow Petyr made more sense.  
> Here's a playlist I had made while writing the story: [playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmUftdMLRu6MzCo43T63CmKqG0RKJ_0LZ)  
> I hope you liked it!!


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